Awakenings
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Slightly AU. Follows the season 5 finale "Homecoming". Alvin Olinsky didn't die, Denny Woods was not arrested, but what is *really* going on?
1. Chapter 1

Awakenings

A/N: Basically, if you hated the season 5 finale "Homecoming", you might like this story. Hope you enjoy, please read and review!

"Sorry, Al."

Hank Voight looked at the picture of his partner and best friend, Alvin Olinsky. Everything he'd kept pent up since that doctor came out of the OR and announced that Al hadn't made it, just came crashing down on him. No longer could he maintain the brick wall exterior he'd personified after all his years on the job. He took another drink, then stepped over to the edge of the roof, looked down, finally, throwing the bottle, watching it fall, hearing it shatter on the empty parking space below. He walked back, and punched the door of the roof access with his fists. They were bruised and bleeding long before he acknowledged any pain. When he finally did, he turned and slid down with his back against the door. He sat on the roof and drew his knees up, half curled in a ball. The events of the last few days kept flashing through his mind, everything that had gone wrong, everything that should never have been allowed to happen. It wasn't supposed to be like this, Al wasn't supposed to go out like this. Voight felt his face scrunch up as his eyes burned harder than his throat had from the liquor, now the tears started to come, now it was actually real. Voight pressed his back against the door, pressed his hands against the sides of his head, and screamed with raw abandon.

Voight continued screaming as somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he became aware of a faint, familiar sound. He couldn't place it, but it kept buzzing, and seemed to be getting louder, louder, louder... Then suddenly, Hank felt the floor beneath his feet give way, and he was falling.

Voight screamed as he felt something hit his back and his eyes shot open. It took a minute for him to remember where he was but it slowly dawned on him that he was in his bedroom. The noise that he'd been hearing in his dream, that was still continuing now, was his cell phone buzzing on the night stand next to him.

"Oh man," Hank murmured to himself as he rubbed his eyes, then reached over for his phone and answered. "Yeah?"

His mind was foggy, still piecing together where reality started and his dream had ended. It was all so real...was any of it real? What time was it? Hell for that matter what day was it? All of the thoughts racing through Voight's mind crashed to a halt when he heard what the person on the other end had to say. _Then_ he was wide awake.

"When?" Voight asked as he looked at the clock. "Where?" He threw back the covers. "I'll be right down."

* * *

"You look like hell," Olinsky said as Voight came up to him.

"Been a rough night," Hank answered as they walked onto the crime scene and noticed one body in the street that the paramedics were in no hurry to load up. "Anybody see anything?"

"No eyewitnesses, somebody heard the shots and called 911," Al explained. "Possibly a gang related drive-by. Apartment complex over there took most of the hits, some of the families were hit while they slept, minor injuries, family of five was taken to the hospital, two teen boys shot dead on the sidewalk...the one in the street is the reason we got called in on this."

One of these things was not like the other. The two fatalities on the sidewalk were a couple of high school boys, this one was a grown man in his 50s who was dressed too professionally to come from this neighborhood, save for the blood stained shirt he wore which showed that all the damage from the shooting had been in the chest and upper torso. Had he been here to meet someone who actually lived on the block? And if so, for what reason?

"He say anything when first responders arrived?" Voight asked.

"DOA," his friend answered.

"Too bad, he might've been able to tell us who killed him," Hank replied as he looked at the bloody, bullet riddled body almost pityingly.

"That would just be too easy," Al replied. "Intelligence wasn't made for easy cases."

Olinsky looked at his friend and saw that Voight wasn't looking well, even by his standards. It was 30-some years too late for Hank to be sickened by the senseless gore of a drive-by shooting, but right now the sergeant looked like he was about to collapse and/or puke.

Al reached over and placed a hand on Voight's shoulder, "You okay, man?"

Voight stepped away and said only, "Gimme a minute."

Olinsky conceded to that, Voight could take a minute, but Olinsky was going with him. He followed Voight over to a dumpster at the corner, Hank forced the lid up and proceeded to lean over and vomit, something Olinsky had never seen him do on the job. After a night of too many drinks, yeah, back in their earlier days before they both learned some self control. But never a crime scene. Especially one that wasn't any bloodier than any of the other random acts of violence which plagued their fine city of Chicago by the hundreds every year. In their line of work, they'd dealt with bodies charred beyond recognition, bodies partially dissolved in acid, people cut open and all their insides strewn out all over the crime scene. None of that had the power to make Voight so much as flinch.

Al stood back and waited until Voight's body had emptied itself of anything it had in it, and switched over to a series of dry heaves, before asking him, "You never get sick, what's the matter, you get food poisoning or something?"

Voight took a Kleenex out of his jacket pocket and wiped out his mouth and tossed it in the dumpster, and still felt a need to wipe his mouth on his sleeve. "Oh man, Al, you wouldn't believe the dream I had earlier."

"I didn't think you ever dreamt," Al replied.

"Well I sure did tonight," Voight told him.

"Past finally catching up to you?" Olinsky asked.

" _That_ wouldn't bother me," Voight said.

"What then?"

Voight turned to his friend and asked, "You got a minute?"

Olinsky gestured back to the corpse in the street. "He's not going anywhere."

* * *

"Woods, huh?" Al asked after Voight finished recapping his nightmare. "Well, hard to put anything past him, as we well know."

Voight shook his head in a stupor, "That was a _real_ nightmare, everything went wrong, stuff I would _never_ let happen."

"It was just a dream, it's over," Al tried to assure his visibly shaken friend. It bothered him to watch Hank get his nerves so frazzled by a dream. He was the one who no matter what he'd done or what happened, always boasted he slept like a baby every night. Al told him, "I'm here, I'm still in one piece. I don't have any plans of going to prison anytime soon."

"Let's get done here," Hank said. "When everybody goes home, there's something I need to tell you."

"You got it," Al remarked.

They went back to the crime scene, stepping around the yellow tape.

"Canvas turn up anything?" Voight asked the uniforms and his crew from Intelligence.

"Just the typical," Antonio said, "nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, nobody knows nothing, nobody even speaks English, and when I called them on it they didn't speak Spanish either."

"Sergeant, are you alright?" Burgess asked, noticing that something about Voight's appearance seemed off, but not able to put her finger on it.

"Fine," Voight answered.

"We get this is a personal case for you," Ruzek said.

"It's not personal, it's just our business," Voight replied. "And we will treat this just like any other case, understood?"

Nobody was dumb enough to argue with that, whether they actually believed it or not.

"Can they get him out of here now?" Atwater asked, gesturing to the body in the street.

"Yeah," Voight answered.

"Cool," Kevin went to inform the paramedics.

"Anybody notify his daughter yet?" Voight asked.

"We tried, nobody answered," one of the uniforms answered.

"Okay, we'll go do it ourselves," he replied.

Voight took one last look at the bloody body of Denny Woods laying in the middle of the street, an estimated five bullets in his chest, but they'd have to wait for an autopsy to get the official report. Death, or maybe just the sheer fact that somebody would actually gun him down, had wiped that arrogant smug smirk off of his face that he had worn so well over the years. Of course, everybody knew that there was no way this was premeditated on anybody's part, just a simple matter wrong place wrong time drive-by and Woods, for whatever reason he'd been out here this late in the night, had simply gotten caught in the crossfire. Behind him, the apartment complex had been peppered with bullets, half the windows shot out, a family of five on the second floor all injured while they slept, two teen boys dead in the yard, possible gang affiliations would have to be checked out. And Denny lay in front of all this, five feet from his car, which had also received damage from the spray of ammo as the shooters had driven by. What had he been doing out here? Did it even matter? Technicalities for a by-the-book report, it would matter there, but in the grand scheme of things, it was irrelevant.

"Goodbye, Denny," Hank said. Somber though his simple statement was, he'd be damned if he didn't feel the inside of one cheek tightening as the beginning of a smile. It didn't last long though, because now he had to go find Brianna and break the news to her. And he would do it with just as much professional courtesy as any other death he'd had to inform next of kin on.

* * *

"Poor kid," Voight said as he and Al left the Woods' home. They'd arrived an hour ago to tell Brianna about her father, and it hadn't been pretty when she found out. Voight wasn't sure about leaving her alone, so he'd called one of the patrolmen to park their squad car outside her house and inform him if she left.

"Only thing worse than losing a child is losing a parent," Al said as he followed his partner out to the car.

Both cops turned when they saw someone walking down the street towards them. The illumination from the street lamp revealed it was Ruzek.

"How'd it go?" he asked.

"Girl just lost her father, how do you think?" Olinsky asked.

"Find anything?" Voight asked him.

"Gang unit's being territorial, they won't talk to us," Adam answered.

"It'll keep until morning," Voight said, "let's call it a night. Oh, Ruzek."

Adam turned on his heel. "Yeah, Sarge?"

"How's your sister doing these days?" Hank asked.

The look on Adam's face said he was just as confused as Al was.

"Uh, fine, I think, I haven't talked to her in a while," he answered.

"Make sure you do," Voight told him. "Don't let too much time pass, we know plenty well from our line of work that the future isn't guaranteed."

Ruzek stood there for a minute with a dumbstruck look on his face before finally responding, "Right...okay...well, 'night."

Al waved in response. Once Ruzek turned the corner and was out of earshot, he turned to Hank and asked, "His sister? You're not starting to get paranoid on me, are you?"

"I just want to make sure," Voight responded.

"Don't start losing it now, friend," Al told him.

"I think I've already lost it," Hank said.

Al turned to get in the car, behind him he heard Voight call to him, "Al."

"Huh?" he turned back to face his partner.

The next thing Olinsky was aware of was the air being squeezed out of him as Voight gripped him in a crushing bear hug. The first couple seconds Olinsky was so stunned he wasn't sure what was happening, then slowly his mind took it all in.

"Hey, hey," he tried to think of something to say, but came up empty. He managed to wriggle one hand out of Voight's death grip and put it on his friend's shoulder and told him, "It's alright, Hank."

They stood like that for several seconds, Al inhaled but still felt like the air wasn't actually getting in. His ribs and half of the stuff in his back were starting to hurt.

"Hank," he rasped, "Hank, this is starting to get awkward. People are going to talk."

As if a cue, Voight saw the squad car pulling up to stake out Woods' house, and he finally let go of his friend.

Al sucked in a large breath and said sheepishly, "After that, I feel like I should buy dinner." On a slightly more serious note he added, "I'd invite you back to my place but a garage isn't too homey."

"You're coming home with me," Voight told him. "Something I want to show you."

* * *

Voight closed his safe and moved the shelf back in front of it. He turned to Al and held up several stacks of bills with bands wrapped around them.

"What's that?" Olinsky asked.

"100 thou, you keep this, if anything ever happens, or looks like it will, you get the best lawyer in the city on retainer," Voight told him as he all but stuffed the money in Al's coat pocket.

"Come on, Hank," Al said.

"I'm serious."

"What could possibly happen?" Al asked.

"The lives we lead, you show a stunning lack of imagination," Voight told him.

"Yeah, but as much stuff as we've pulled over the years, nothing's happened," Al said.

"And I'm for keeping it that way," Voight replied as they headed up the stairs, "but where people go wrong is when they think nothing can happen."

"So what about you?" Al asked.

"I've got my own ass covered, it's you I want to be sure about," he answered.

"Hank, you _know_ that what you dreamed about could never happen."

"I know," Hank said as they returned to the kitchen. "But I don't feel like taking any chances."

Al looked at his friend and said simply, "I don't get it."

Voight turned to face him, and explained, "First I lost Camille, then I lost Justin, then I lost my grandson, then I lost Erin." Now the picture was starting to get clearer to Olinsky, who just stood there and said nothing. Voight paced around the room, looking like he couldn't go through with what he was about to say, but somehow he managed, though Al could hear his voice starting to break. "My whole family, everyone I ever cared about, they're all gone.. _._ I can't let anything happen to you too, you're all I've got now."

"Hank." Now it was Olinsky grabbing Voight and pulling him close as he heard the sobs emerging from his friend's throat, then felt the tremors wracking through his body. It had been many years since he had ever seen Hank like this, many years and many personal tragedies ago, back when Camille died. That had been a lifetime ago, and at the time it was the worst thing that they'd lived through, neither of them at the time could possibly envision all the deaths they'd had to live with since.

"It's alright, Hank," Al tried to reassure his friend as he kept a tight hold on him. "It's alright."

Voight could hardly hear him. He was lost in the memories of the dream. Alvin arrested, locked up, denied bail, stabbed, all the blood, waiting by the OR doors, waiting...waiting...waiting...then the doctor coming out.

Hank struggled in Olinsky's embrace as he brought his hands up to his head and screamed, just as he had on the rooftop in the dream.


	2. Chapter 2

Alvin saw the headlights of the car that pulled up out front through a slat in the Venetian blind. He heard the car door open, saw somebody step out of the car, and he replaced the slat and wandered out of the living room to the front door. It was early in the morning, soon people all over the city would be going to work, but right now it was still near pitch dark out, perfect time for a visit that wouldn't be witnessed.

The door opened and Trudy Platt cautiously stepped in. "What's going on, Olinsky?"

"He's in here," Al nonchalantly nodded to the living room.

Trudy followed him and saw Voight passed out on the couch, sprawled on his stomach with the side of his face buried in a pillow, with a blanket draped over the lower half of his body. He looked like he'd crashed hard coming off of something.

"What happened?" Trudy asked as she went over to Voight.

Al stayed behind and answered, still in his unreadable monotone voice, "He was having trouble sleeping so I helped him out."

Trudy knelt down beside the couch and took Voight's pulse, then smelled his breath but couldn't find any trace of liquor.

"What did you do to him?" she asked.

"Drugged him," Al answered matter-of-factly.

"With what?"

"Sleeping pills he kept in the medicine cabinet since Camille's funeral," he answered.

"How many did you give him?" Trudy asked.

"Hopefully enough," he answered. "He's been out for four hours."

Trudy stood back up and asked again, "What's going on?"

"Trudy, I'm worried about this guy," Al told her honestly.

"What?" she asked in disbelief. "Why?"

"Denny Woods was killed tonight in a drive-by."

"Yeah, I heard," Trudy said. "Score one for our team, eh?"

"I think the news has rattled his brain," Al told her, and looked down at his unconscious friend sprawled on the couch. "He had a total breakdown tonight, Trudy, over a _dream_ he had. That's not Voight and you know it."

Trudy gave him one of her looks she used on patrolmen who annoyed her with stupid questions, "What kind of dream? Like some guy with metal fingers chasing him or something?"

"It's a long story. I think everything that's been going on lately has gotten to be too much for him."

"Oh God," Trudy said as she sat down in a chair next to the couch. She intertwined the fingers of her hands and brought them up to her mouth, which did nothing to hide the panicked look in her eyes. "I was worried this might happen after what happened to Justin, but that was two years ago."

Al paused for a moment before responding, "You never get over your child being murdered."

Trudy looked up at him with a look of horror, "I'm sorry, Al."

He gave a small shrug and said, "At least my wife can still bitch at me about everything I'm doing wrong. I guess that's something."

"So what now?" Trudy asked, looking to Voight, who still hadn't moved.

"I don't know," Al said. "I was hoping we could put our heads together and come up with something."

"I can hear you," Voight surprised them as his voice joined the conversation, a second later he opened his eyes and looked at them.

Trudy stood up. "Hank. How're you doing?"

"Oh terrific," Voight dryly answered as he rubbed his eyes. "My two best friends of 20 years are saying I'm nuts."

"No, Hank," Trudy said as she sat down beside him, "nobody's saying that, we're just trying to figure out what happened."

Voight sat up, still entangled in the blanket, his eyes still not quite focused, and looked at Trudy and said, "You cut your hair, I like it."

"Hank," Trudy looked at him. "What's going on?"

"I had a bad night," he answered simply, then added a bit self consciously, "And it's gotten me thinking about stuff I never thought I'd have to."

"Okay, look," Trudy looked from one man to the other and told them, "I know nobody wants to hear about any of my husband's latest endeavors but...a while back, Randy took some kind of dream analysis course..." she cocked her head to glare at Olinsky through the corner of her eye and added, "Don't ask. Anyway..." she turned to Voight, "what those freaky deaky hipsters told him was that the power of a dream is limited to the people you tell. Something about, the more you tell it, the more people hear it, the less power it holds over you, the less real it becomes." Trudy took Hank's hand in both of hers and looked at him with the fullest sincerity anybody would ever see from her and said, "So I know it sounds stupid, Hank, believe me, but since Olinsky didn't bother bringing me up to speed on what this is all about, I want you to start from the beginning and tell me everything you remember."

Voight looked at Trudy, and looked up at Al, and decided he had nothing to lose. Here with him were the two people in the whole world that he knew he could trust, nothing he said to them would ever leave this house. Al already thought he was going nuts, but he knew even if Trudy came to the same conclusion, she'd never admit it.

"It started when Ruzek's sister was arrested for DUI," he began. "So she wouldn't lose her kids, Ruzek tried to make it go away, Woods found out, and threatened to send both of them to prison unless Ruzek ratted me out. He had Ruzek bug my office, planted thousands of dollars in a drug house to catch me not entering it into evidence." Voight pointed at Al, then himself. "We took him out to the middle of nowhere and confronted him on it. Told him to keep working for Woods to find his weakness so we could finally bring him down. Then...they dug up Kevin Bingham's body."

"What?" Trudy asked. Then she recovered herself, "I'm sorry, go on."

"They discovered his body while breaking up the ground for a new store, traced the bullet back to a gun that I confiscated from a robbery suspect, which later disappeared from evidence. Got an eyewitness that put Al and Erin at the scene where the body was moved."

Trudy and Al looked at each other, but Voight didn't notice.

"Then they found DNA evidence that tied Al to the body," Hank continued.

* * *

"The look on Denny's face when he realized he'd been set up was the only good thing about it, that was priceless," Voight said with a slight expression of amusement on his face as he wound up the story for his two friends. He didn't have any concept of time, how long he'd been talking. Sometime during his recall, Al had gone to the kitchen and brought back coffee, even though Voight was wide awake, his friend suggested it might help clear the fog from his mind. As he recounted his dream, he started to relive the whole thing, it became real to him again and he was having trouble keeping the memories separated from reality. Even having Al standing right before him in the living room wasn't enough to stave off everything that had been running through his mind in the dream.

"Then it was all over," he said, "and I was on the roof of the district...and..."

He closed his eyes and lowered his head.

 _"Sorry, Al."_

 _The bottle fell and shattered into a thousand pieces in the parking lot. He beat the door with his fists, finally breaking down and sliding to the floor. Screaming._

"And then I woke up," Voight opened his eyes and looked at his friends.

Trudy's eyes were sympathetic, she'd listened to the whole thing and was slowly taking it in. Al had gotten most of the details last night, but he looked just as puzzled about it now as he did then.

"That would be enough to upset anybody, Hank, that's understandable," Trudy said. "But look at the facts. One, Denny Woods is _dead_ , any threat that he might _have_ been to you and Intelligence, he's not anymore."

"Two," Alvin added, "I called in a favor and checked on Ruzek's sister, she hasn't been arrested for anything for years."

"Three," Trudy said, "Kevin Bingham disappeared two years ago and nobody knows what happened to him. He's not going to be dug up under some pavement." Trudy saw Voight's eyes shifting and held up a finger to get his attention, "Four, can you _really_ see yourself putting all your funds into a trust for your grandson?"

"It would be a nice gesture," Voight replied sadly, then shook his head, "but no. Olive hasn't spoken to me since the day she left, my grandson has no idea I'm even alive, he'll never know me, by the time he's 21 he won't accept money from someone he never knew. Besides, as long as I'm alive, there are people in this city who need my financial help, that safe has to be full to make sure they get it. I hate to say it but right now the people of Chicago who depend on me are more important than my grandson, who as far as I know is getting along just fine without any help from me."

"Five," Trudy continued, "even if Bingham _didn't_ disappear and _was_ moved from the silos to a vacant lot...no eyewitness would ever place Erin there, because she wouldn't be involved."

Voight looked at her with a less than certain expression on his face.

"Six, even if they would've found Bingham's body," Trudy said, "they wouldn't get Al's DNA off of it, they wouldn't get anybody's DNA off of it. Because if you ever would've buried his body, you would've made sure anything that could've contained DNA would've been burnt beyond recognition long before the burial. Seven, even if you did shoot Bingham, you wouldn't have used a gun they could trace back to the evidence locker, traced back to a suspect _you_ personally confiscated the gun from."

"Of course he wouldn't," Al agreed. "You don't take a gun out of evidence to kill someone, you take one off a dead dealer in the street, shoot someone with it, then dispose of it. Then if it's ever found, the guilty party is already dead."

"See?" Trudy asked.

"Of course that's becoming obsolete, today you can just make a gun on a printer and then dismantle it when you're done," Al added.

"Thank you, Olinsky," Trudy dryly remarked, then looked to Voight, "does this help any, Hank?"

"It does sound stupid in the cold light of day, I know that," Hank responded. "It just felt so real." He stood up, a bit wobbly on his feet but he quickly found his balance. "I've already lost everything once...then I saw everything else I had slipping away too, and I couldn't stop it."

Voight turned and looked at his friends and told them, "The two of you are the only family that I have left...if _anything_ would happen to either of you..."

Whatever Voight was about to say next, he couldn't, he felt, rather than heard, his voice starting to break again, he shook his head and closed his eyes.

"Hank," Trudy jumped up from the couch and went to him and hugged him.

Al joined her and grabbed Voight by one side and told Trudy to help him get Hank back on the couch, they did, and while Al disappeared into the kitchen, Trudy stayed on the couch with Voight and told him, "Hank, you don't have to worry about anything happening to either of us, we're fine. Hey," she smoothed her hand over his forehead to get his attention, "The three of us have been friends for 20 years, we're an unstoppable force."

Voight hugged Trudy in return and told her, "I love you both so much."

"We love you too, Hank," she told him, "it's alright."

Al came back with another coffee mug in his hand and told Trudy, "Get him to drink some of this."

Trudy took the mug, it was warm but not hot, and got Hank to swallow some of the coffee. After that he started to calm down.

"Hank," Trudy said, "take a sick day, the guys can handle the Woods shooting."

"I don't need a sick day," Voight replied as he regained his voice.

"Hank, you've _never_ taken a sick day," she pointed out. "Call in, tell them you have food poisoning, tell them you have a hernia...hell, tell them you have hemorrhoids, just take the day off and take it easy."

Voight looked her in the eyes as if searching for something, and said, "You _do_ think I'm crazy."

"No I don't," she replied, "but we all need a mental health day at some point in this line of work. Remember last year when I was in the hospital? You wouldn't let me come back to work for two weeks."

"You were beaten within an inch of your life, Trudy."

"And you got shot and came back to work the next day, what's the difference?"

Voight smiled tiredly at her and told her, "You're a great gal, Trudy."

Then Voight's head lulled to the side and he was out.

"Hank?" Trudy sat up with a start.

"He's alright," Alvin told her. "I spiked his coffee. By the time he wakes up, it'll be too late for him _to_ go in to work."

Trudy eased Voight down on the couch and covered him back up. As a parting gesture she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead, even though he was already too dead to the world to notice. As she stood up she told Olinsky, "I think you were right about his brain getting rattled. I think we're going to have to keep an eye on him the next couple days."

"I don't see that being a problem," Alvin told her, "because I don't think he's going to let me out of his sight once he regains consciousness. If you had ever been as physically close to him as I was last night..."

"Olinsky!" Trudy spoke up in a loud and firm tone, "Whatever the next words out of your mouth are going to be, I don't want to hear it!"

Alvin did something that was out of character for him, he laughed. Trudy sounded one step away from putting her fingers in her ears and screaming 'la la la la' just to block out whatever she thought he was about to say.

"I think Woods' murder is too much for him to process right now," Trudy said.

"Gotta say if there was any chance of his nightmare coming true, that'd be one hell of a preemptive strike," Al replied.

"But we know there's no way in hell it could ever happen," Trudy said as she put on her jacket, "because Bingham was never buried at the silos, _or_ moved to an empty lot." She looked Alvin square in the eyes and said matter of factly, "That's what the docks are for."

Al smiled, "I appreciate you helping us that night, Trudy, I know Hank does too."

"I know he does," she replied. "That's why I hate seeing him get bent out of shape over this. What happens at the Chicago docks...stays with the fish."

"Amen," Al leaned over and kissed Trudy on the cheek, "Love you, Trudy."

"Yeah well, don't let Randy hear you say that," she said. "I'll come up with something to tell everyone why Voight's not coming in, you just keep an eye on him."

"You got it," Olinsky replied as he shut the door behind her.

A/N: This was originally going to be a 2-chapter story, but there will be a 3rd and final chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

Voight became aware of the sensation of his heart racing in his chest. The second thing he became aware of was that he was burning up. He felt like he was cooking in his own skin. He woke up with a startled gasp and shot up on the couch, kicking the blanket off of him. In the moment he was so disoriented the first thing that came to his mind to say was to call out, "Erin?"

The sun shining in the windows indicated it was sometime in the late afternoon. Voight realized he was on the couch and then came to the conclusion that his clothes were soaked with perspiration.

Olinsky entered the room and nonchalantly asked, "How're you feeling?"

Voight rubbed his eyes and looked around the room, "What's going on? What time is it?"

Al checked his watch and said, "It's going on 5 o' clock."

"What happened?" Voight asked.

"It's the strangest thing," Al said innocently, "You were talking to Trudy one minute and then you were out cold."

Voight looked up at him and quickly realized, "You drugged me."

"I prefer to think of it as assisting the sandman," Olinsky replied. "Sorry, friend, you weren't in any position to clock in today...and truth be told, I think you know it."

Voight still wasn't fully awake, and it showed. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed a hand against them as he tried to concentrate. "What'd you tell everyone?"

"I didn't tell them," Al said. "Trudy did."

"Trudy?" Voight looked at him. Then it started to come back to him. "Trudy was here."

"Yeah." Al picked up a glass of water off the dining room table and took it over to Voight and told him, "You better drink this, after sleeping for 12 hours I'd say dehydration is a safe bet."

Voight took the glass and eyed it skeptically.

"I didn't put anything in it," Al told him. "Besides, you know you can't lace plain water with anything."

"Right now I wouldn't put it past you," Voight said as he took a small sip, as if testing it. He was slowly starting to become more alert and he glared at his friend, "You crossed a line, Al."

"Yeah, I did," he responded simply. He added, "But you know I had a good reason for doing it. That dream might've scared you, but the way you were acting last night and this morning scared the hell out of me."

There was a knock at the front door.

"Now what?" Voight asked as he swung his feet onto the floor to get up.

"Stay there, I'll see," Al went to answer the door. He was definitely not expecting the person standing on the porch.

"Hi Al."

"Kim," Al tried not to let on how surprised he was at the woman carrying a vase of flowers. "What're you doing here?"

"I heard about Hank, is he here? How's he doing?"

"He's, uh, yeah, come see for yourself." Al wasn't sure what Kim had heard, but he knew it would be far less suspicious to let her see Voight for herself than to make up a reason why she couldn't see him.

Kim walked through the dining room and saw Voight laid on the couch and all but ran over to him and dropped on one knee to see him eye to eye. "Sarge, how're you doing? Are you feeling better?"

Voight looked at her with a puzzled expression and asked, "Huh?"

"We all heard what happened, and I decided to come and see how you were doing," Kim held up the vase awkwardly, "and to bring you some flowers, they're from everyone...well actually Hailey and I picked them out, the guys are just..." Kim looked to the ceiling and shook her head, "useless when it comes to flowers."

Cautiously, Voight asked, "What's going on?" His mind was racing, but for the life of him he couldn't remember anything that would clue him in. "What did Trudy tell you?"

Kim leaned in as if it was confidential and assured him, "It's okay, Trudy told us that you threw your back out," she nodded back towards Olinsky, "and that Al had to take you to the doctor. How bad is it?"

Voight still wasn't getting it, so Alvin jumped in. "The doctor gave him some top grade pain pills, he was out of it for a while."

That would work for Hank.

"And you must've had a fever," Kim said as she put the flowers down and felt his forehead, and noticed the sweat stains on his shirt, "you're completely soaked."

"Nah, it's drool, I slept hard," Voight joked.

"Are you feeling better now?" she asked.

"I'm feeling fine," he insisted, but decided not to push it. He leaned back against the pillow and told Burgess, "I'll be in tomorrow. How's the case going?"

"Uh," she shook her head, "we don't have a lot of leads yet, but we're working on it...so far it just looks like Woods was in the wrong place at the wrong time, we haven't been able to find any connection to him and anyone in that neighborhood."

"When's the funeral?"

"Nobody's said yet," Kim told him. "You're not actually going, are you?"

"I will," Voight answered. "Denny Brooks and I were partners, we _were_ friends once...that all changed when he became a dirty cop. But he was still a cop and as such, he will receive a policeman's funeral with all the stops. His daughter will be there and I intend to be there for her sake...she doesn't know what her father's done. She never will know, it can't do any good now. All she'll have is the legacy left behind at the cemetery."

Kim looked at him in astonishment. "That's really nice, Hank..." there was an awkward pause before she equally awkwardly asked, "Can I...hug you or will that make your back worse?"

"Let's find out," Voight said with a small smile. He sat up slowly and Kim put her arms around his neck. Hank reciprocated and told her, "Thanks for the flowers. I'll see you tomorrow."

After a couple minutes, Kim left, leaving the two men to talk amongst themselves again. Voight stood up and hugged Olinsky.

"We're not going through this again, are we?" Al asked.

"Thank you for what you did," Voight told him. "Thank you for helping me two years ago."

Al put his arm around Voight's back in return and said, "Yeah well, that's what friends do."

"Hey," Voight pulled away from him, "you up for dinner?"

"I could eat," he answered.

"I'll go shower and change, we're going to take a guest with us."

* * *

"So how're you doing, Hank?" Trudy asked when he called her that evening.

Voight held his cell phone in one hand as he stood before his bedroom mirror and looked at his reflection as he got dressed.

"I'm doing fine, Trudy. I want to thank you for covering for me."

"Yeah well don't thank me too much," she replied. "To really sell it, I told everybody that your back went out in the shower and Al had to help you get dressed."

Voight threw his head back and laughed. That would explain Burgess's behavior earlier.

"So what're your plans tonight?" she asked.

"Al and me are gonna take Brianna Woods out to dinner," Voight answered. "She's a good kid, she can't help what her father was, and I don't think she should be alone through all of this."

"You're a good man, Voight," Trudy said.

"Don't spread it around, people will talk," he replied. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay, bye, Hank."

"Bye, Trudy."

* * *

Four days after Denny Woods' murder, Intelligence tracked down the gunman. He was known to his associates as Spyder, a thin, wiry man with half his body covered in tattoos. He had been sought out by one gang and paid $1,000 to open fire on members of a rival gang to send a message, but as it turned out, he'd gotten the wrong address. As he sat in the cage at the 21st District, the door opened and Voight entered the room. Spyder hadn't yet had the privilege of meeting Hank Voight, all the same when he saw the cop entering the room, Spyder jumped to his feet.

Voight stood in front of the cage and looked at him for a moment, then he said to the shooter, "A thousand bucks for a life, was it worth it? I don't mean the cop you shot, _your_ life, for a thousand bucks, and now you're going to die behind bars. Ballistics just sent over a report on the gun you used to shoot that cop and those two kids...tied a dozen more murders to it. So when you're in maximum security for the next 70 years, I want you to know something. Officially, that jury's going to convict you because you killed a cop. And his daughter is going to take some minor comfort in the fact that you _are_ going to rot for killing him. Unofficially, he was a dirty cop whose life wasn't worth anything, but she doesn't know that, but every day you spend locked up isn't going to be for him, it'll be for the 14 innocent lives you took."

The man inside the cage just looked at Voight and didn't say anything.

"Well, you're smarter than most of the people who have been in your position," Voight told him. "No excuses, no victim blaming, not even shifting blame to the people who hired you. To be honest, I gotta respect that. It takes a real man to take the full consequences of his actions and keep his mouth shut, even if it means he dies for it. If this state had the death penalty, believe me, you'd get it, and I would be there, front row seat, and I'd watch them push the plungers, and I'd watch your body starting to shut down, and watch the expression on your face as you realize it's happening and it's real and there's nothing you can do. And I'd watch them check your vitals to make sure, and I'd watch them wheel your body out on a gurney, and dump you in an unmarked grave. Instead, I'm just going to take comfort in knowing my tax dollars are going towards your housing at MCC for the rest of your unnatural life. As a professional courtesy though, I want to thank you for what you've done for the rest of us in the CPD."

And with that, Voight walked away.

* * *

Denny Woods' funeral was the next day. Voight attended, as did the rest of the police officers, in full dress uniform. He escorted Brianna to the funeral, and once his professional obligations were fulfilled for the service, he sat beside her as the eulogy began and offered a professional shoulder for her to cry on when it all became too much for her.

Voight still remained long after the funeral was over. Everybody else had gone home hours ago, only he remained, and he stared at the grave that Woods' coffin had been lowered in and the dirt had been recently laid over.

Trudy made her way down the aisles to where Voight sat up front. She'd attended as a professional courtesy but left with the others earlier in the day. She'd returned when she realized that Hank was still at the cemetery and decided to find out what was going on. She sat down in the seat next to Voight and looked at him. Sometime after the service had ended, he'd taken out his black glasses and put them on, but from the angle where Trudy sat, she was able to see a tear slowly making its way down his otherwise stone face.

"What's the matter, Hank?" Trudy asked.

His voice was solid when he answered, whatever he was feeling now was nothing compared to what she'd seen five days earlier.

"I hated him, Trudy," Voight answered as he continued to stare straight ahead at the burial plot. "I don't hate him for what he was, but what he _became_ , and what he forced me to do. He _knew_ I couldn't just look the other way while he framed an innocent man, and he resented _me_ for it. To his dying day he resented me for not backing him up." Voight slowly shook his head. "I hate to say it, Trudy, but I'm glad that he's dead. So help me, I feel _better_ knowing he's dead."

Trudy reached over and rubbed his back. "It's alright, Hank, we understand."

Before Voight could ask 'We?', he heard footsteps behind them, and heard Alvin sit down in the row behind them. Through a reflection on his sunglasses, Voight saw without turning around, that Al had changed out of his dress uniform and was back in his regular blue jeans, black shirt and cap.

"Ready to go?" Al asked. After a short pause he asked Voight, "You wanna dig him up and make sure he's dead?"

Voight chuckled in spite of himself. It wasn't something they hadn't done before, granted for different reasons.

"Nah, I'm good," Hank said as he got up from his seat. "Let's get out of here. It's over."


End file.
